Ukraine said it targeted the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea in a missile strike Friday, the latest in a string of attacks on Russian military infrastructure.
(Bloomberg) — Ukraine said it targeted the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea in a missile strike Friday, the latest in a string of attacks on Russian military infrastructure.
“Successful hit,” the Ukrainian army’s Strategic Communications Directorate said on social media.
The building was damaged, and one serviceman was missing, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on social media. Air defenses shot down five missiles, it said.
Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, has come under repeated attack by drones or missiles in recent months as Ukrainian forces press their counteroffensive to retake occupied territory in the country’s south and east. A navy ship and submarine were destroyed in dry dock at a shipyard in Sevastopol last week, and the bridge linking Russia to the peninsula was partially damaged in an attack in July.
Russia’s fleet in Crimea has two options, “voluntary or forced self-liquidation,” Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said Friday on social media. He threatened that the fleet “will be sliced up like salami” as Ukrainian forces conduct high-precision strikes on military infrastructure targets.
Russian officials in Crimea said local internet services were under “unprecedented cyberattack” causing outages in the peninsula, Tass reported.
A fire in the Black Sea Fleet’s building was being dealt with by emergency services, Sevastopol’s Moscow-appointed Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev wrote in a social-media post. He urged people to stay away from downtown Sevastopol where the headquarters is located. Debris is scattered over a wide area, Russia’s state-run Tass news service reported.
(Updates with Ukrainian military confirming strike)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.